Following is the full text of the speech of Aldermanic President Bernard S. Deutsch, president of the American Jewish Congress, testifying for American public opinion in “The Case of Civilization Against Hitlerism” last night.
One year ago, on this very platform, the first indictment against Adolf Hitler was laid. Then he first commenced upon the execution of his announced program.
The admonition that he stop the forces which he had then unleashed before irreparable injury were inflicted upon the people of Germany, remained unheeded. That warning was sounded again and again from all parts of the civilized world and yet, instead of moderation, there resulted, as though in defiance of and as in challenge to the aroused public opinion of the civilized world an intensified program of violent propaganda, conceived in inquitous intolerance, bigotry and hatred.
The civilized world, up to one year ago, had come to believe that by education and culture the peoples of the world would be expected to become tolerant and to understand one another. The progress of education and culture in Germany, over a period of more than a thousand years, gave us the right to expect and to hope that a country, with a history of education and culture over so long a period, could never revert to the practices and principles which animated those who lived in the dark or mediaeval ages.
Today, after the lapse of one year of Hitlerism, public opinion justly indicts Adolf Hitler and his cohorts first with the crime of having destroyed the faith and belief that education and culture were the requisites for the eventual creation of the spirit of the brotherhood of man.
DESTROYED HUMAN RIGHTS
Public opinion here indicts Hitlerism as the attempted destroyer of the most precious heritage of the people of modern times, the right to live in peace and security; the right to think and to speak freely; the right to worship one’s God, and to adhere to one’s own religious beliefs.
Public opinion here indicts Hitlerism as the attempted destroyer of world peace and that amity and accord among nations which, in these trying days, are so essential if civilization is to progress and the world of tomorrow is to be better than the world that was and is.
Public opinion here indicts Hitlerism upon the charge that the Nazi government in Germany has not only destroyed the foundations of the German Republic, but, under penalty of death, torture, and economic extermination, and by process of progressive strangulation, has reduced and subjugated to abject slavery all sections of its population, so that they no longer are free men.
Public opinion here indicts Adolf Hitler and his cohorts with attempting, by subsidy, by propaganda, by the creation of forces of reaction here and abroad, to reproduce Hitlerism, with all its implications and with all its dire results, in many of the countries of the world. The process by which municipal government in Germany, long considered a model for the rest of the world, has been destroyed, is being repeated in Austria under the aegis of a Nazi international. The spirit of racial, political, and religious discrimination, formulated according to the “Aryan” principle, is being fostered through Hitler and his agents in other parts of the world.
VICIOUS FOREIGN PROPAGANDA
Public opinion charges that these movements are neither spontaneous, nor sporadic, but are inspired by the Hitlerites, financed by the Hitler government, and directed and manned by Hitler agents.
We charge as counts in this indictment that:
(a) Agents of the Hitler government are invading our schools and our universities.
(b) Emissaries of the Nazi regime are being smuggled into America as members of ships’ crews, and otherwise, merely for propaganda purposes.
(c) Nazi propagandists are attempting to colonize our labor organizations.
(d) Nazi spies, directed to spread the gospel of Hitlerism with all its implications, are hidden in our public institutions.
(e) Nazi cells, created for the sole purpose of spreading the virus to which I have referred, the virus of bigotry and hatred, exist in every public center in our land.
(f) Nazi funds finance American organizations created for and devoted to the spread of this filthy propaganda.
(g) Nazi literature is disseminated through and litters our subways, the shelves of our public libraries, and even penetrates freely through the United States mails.
(h) German consuls, accredited by the German Reich, ostensibly for the purpose of cementing friendly relations between our government and their own, are likewise acting as propagandists to spread the gospel of Hitler, and thereby, instead of cementing friendly relations between the two countries, are here sowing seeds of discord and are here adding to the efforts of those who are attempting to set up one part of our people against another. They are capitalizing here, as they have in Germany, upon the tragic economic system which has enmeshed the world, and which has brought suffering and want in its wake to millions of people. Nazi agents here seek to create in this country the same scapegoat, to wit, the Jew, upon which to place the blame for the ills of the world, as they have attempted in their own land.
(i) Nazi efforts in this country, and in other lands, have for their ultimate goal, the complete breakdown of the democratic foundations of government.
FRONTAL ATTACK ON CIVILIZATION
Hitlerism menaces all that is humane and civilized. It is a direct attack on the progress of the race and the advancement of society. It is a threat to the maintenance of peaceable relations between nation and nation. In essence, it is mediaevalism, rendered even more cruel through the employment of the implements of so-called civilization.
Public opinion, in support of this indictment, here charges that the philosophy and the practice of Hitlerism is grounded in the appeal to force. Its policy is the extolling of militarism. Its dreams are those of world dominance.
Public opinion contrasts with the charges in this indictment the principles which are the concern of civilization — safeguarding democratic ideals and institutions; the freedom of the individual; the progress of society.
In the light of this record, based on these charges, none of which have ever been, or could in truth have been denied, civilization makes this indictment and calls upon the jury of enlightened public opinion to render its verdict; that this verdict be not inspired by hate or animosity, but that it serve as an expression of the horror of civilization over what has transpired; that by this verdict Germany herself may not be destroyed and that the steady progress of civilization may be unimpeded in its course; and that those who come after us may have, as their heritage, a world free from the dire and sinister influences that have done so much to destroy our faith and our hopes.
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